Boeing oversight was 'too hands-off' before the 737 Max crisis, FAA chief says

Mike Whitaker, the chief administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, told members of the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Thursday that his agency was too lenient in its regulation of the plane maker, and that it was going to start doing things differently.

“The FAA should have had much better visibility into what was happening at Boeing before January 5th, and the approach was too hands-off and too focused on paperwork audits and not focused enough on inspections,” he said during his opening statement. “We have changed that approach over the last several months and [those changes] are permanent.” It is worth noting that the FAA said something similar the last time there was an issue with the 737 Max.

On January 5, a piece of fuselage known as a door plug fell off an Alaska Airlines-operated 737 Max 9 plane mid-flight. The resulting scandal has already prompted more FAA “boots on the ground,” not only at Boeing but at Spirit Aerosystems, the supplier that built the fuselage in question. An initial investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that four key bolts that were supposed to keep the door plug in place were not reinstalled during the plane’s production.

Since then, the company’s stock has fallen significantly and is now down more than 28% for the year; Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun announced that he will be retiring at the end of the year.